I think I’ve come up with a universal theory of voter fraud, one that explains Obama’s (to me) inexplicable victory in 2012 as well as (to the Progressives and #NeverTrumpers) Trump’s equally inexplicable victory in 2016. This theory is not to be taken seriously, but I still like how comprehensive it is.

We start with the fact that Obama won in 2012. This was rather amazing considering that the economy was dormant, unemployment was still high, the Benghazi attack showed a resurgent Al Qaeda, the public was becoming aware of the extent of Obama’s and the Dems’ lies when it came to Obamacare, the War in Afghanistan was escalating, Syria was devolving into the worst kind of civil war while Obama quibbled about red lines, Obama had promised Putin more “flexibility,” and racial hatred was flaring in ways not seen since the Civil Rights Movement.

And yet Obama won. The polls, which cannot be trusted, claim that it’s just because voters like Obama. I don’t see it, so there must be another explanation for his victory, especially given the resurgence of the Republican brand outside of the White House.

Part One of my universal theory is that Obama won in 2012 because he had two advantages over Romney: (1) a superb “get out the vote” infrastructure in urban areas and (2) in those same urban areas, a superb “get out the illegal vote” infrastructure. This second machine reached out to all the urban illegal immigrants, dead voters, felons, and unregistered or irresponsible millennials — that is, all the people who make up the Democrat cohort and who would vote heavily in urban pockets during federal elections, if they could vote legally, if they weren’t dead, or if they weren’t sitting around in a pot haze and clinging to their safe spaces.

I never watch the Emmys, and I say that with a great deal of pride. As last night’s anti-Trump exhibition showed, television is no longer about either entertaining or informing the American people; it is, instead, about “progaganda.” That’s not a typo. It’s a great neologism my friend Wolf Howling came up with to address the fact that whether watching their shows, attending their schools, or listening to (or reading) their news, you will be made to embrace the Progressive agenda.

For those who have drunk the Kool-Aid, it’s irrelevant (a) that the Progressive agenda has come close to destroying black America; (b) that it is making America incapable of defending itself against the radical threat of fundamentalist Islam; (c) that it is anti-science insofar as it pretends that the XX and XY chromosome pairing in humans is meaningless or that the planet is melting, all actual evidence to the contrary; (d) that it is aggressively trying to destroy the First Amendment’s promise that people can hold to the core tenets of their faith without government prosecution (except when those tenets tell them to bomb, behead, shoot, or stab others); and (e) that it pushes a vision of Big Government that, when carried to its logical conclusion, invariably ends up with government killing more people than all the individual “haters” or gun “nuts” or “Bible clingers” combined. What matters to the Left is that it feels good about itself. Its intentions are all to help the “little people,” never mind that the effect of those intentions predictably destroys those it aims to help.

This intro brings me to Jill Soloway, celebrated in Hollywood for having made a show about a transgender person who, if I understand correctly, pretends not to have paired XY chromosomes, but insists instead on being treated as a person with XX chromosomes. (I have to admit that I’m always confused about the terminology: what does “transgender man” or “transgender woman” mean? I cannot tell if the sex modifier in those phrases refers to chromosome reality or body dysmorphic wish-fulfillment.)

So Jews were otherized in Nazi Germany to gain political power for Hitler, and right now Donald Trump is doing the same thing. He’s otherizing people. He calls women pigs if they don’t look like beauty pageant contestants. He blames Muslim and Mexicans for our problems. He makes fun of disabled people. This is otherizing with a capital O, and has been used in our history before to start and win wars, and he needs to be called out every chance he gets for being one of the most dangerous monsters to ever approach our lifetimes. He’s a complete dangerous monster, and any moment that I have to call Trump out for being an inheritor to Hitler, I will.

Now, much as it pains me to admit it, Solway’s right partially. There is a presidential candidate who is openly “otherizing people,” entirely dismissing their humanity, and making it quite plain that they are so evil that they cannot be saved but are, instead, a blight on the body politic. It’s just that Solway got her candidate wrong:

Am I the only one who finds this sentence incredibly disturbing? The sentence comes from an article about Gloria Vanderbilt’s life and, more specifically, her sex life, which is the subject of a new documentary. The person behind the documentary is Anderson Cooper, Vanderbilt’s son, and noted gay TV personality who used the grotesque phrase “tea baggers,” which refers to a gay oral sex practice, to describe those Americans who came together against big government in the Tea Party.

Oh! You want to know what the sentence is, don’t you? This is the sentence: “Anderson loved hearing about his mother’s sex life but felt embarrassed that it was more interesting than his own.” We live in a deeply sick society.

As Trump’s momentum slows, Cruz’s organization starts to pay off.It’s instructive to look at Trump’s fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants campaign, versus Cruz’s, which is simultaneously methodical and agile. When it comes to White House management, I prefer the latter to the former.

The real Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders sat down with The New York Daily News and was utterly appalling. Whether he was out-Hamasing Hamas when it came to slandering Israel, or revealing that he had idea how to effectuate his campaign promises (free everything; destroy banks!), Bernie was an idiot, and a mean one at that. The interview was especially illuminating, because it revealed who Bernie really is: Your horrible stoner college roommate.

Politicized AGs try to stifle dissent. Both David French and the Independent Sentinel look at the Left’s latest, and very dangerous, constitutional assault: persecuting speech through the medium of defending “climate change.”

Since 2007, I’ve been saying that Obama isn’t a mere narcissist but is, instead, a malignant narcissist. He worships at his own altar and is, in his own mind at least, infallible. The manifests itself most obviously in the fact that, once he’s set himself on an intellectual or behavioral path, he is incapable of change — or at least, incapable of change based upon external critique and criticism. To a narcissist, any such external input must either be ignored or twisted so that it conforms to the narcissists own immutable infallibility.

Everything that I just wrote is highly abstract. If you want to see it played out concretely before your eyes, though, you can do so simply by checking in with the Obama press conference.

The first indication that you’re dealing with a narcissist, rather than a balanced person is the thin skin he shows. A good example occurs when Obama picks a fight with a reporter for daring to ask him about his future plans now that there’s a new sheriff in town. (This clip has the bonus of an almost incoherently inarticulate Obama, forced to respond on the fly, instead of reading off his TelePrompter.)

Another sign of his narcissism is his effort (failed, I might add) to imply that his lack of communication with Mitch McConnell was somehow McConnell’s fault for failing to talk to Boehner. And no, that makes no sense unless, like a trapped rat, you’re desperately seeking any escape from the consequences of your own conduct:

Most significantly, though, in terms of the narcissism charge is the fact that, rather than being chastened by the Republican roar across America, Obama made it clear that, in his own mind, he’s still in the driver’s seat and Republicans will have to work with him, rather than vice versa:

Congress will pass some bills I cannot sign. I’m pretty sure I’ll take some actions that some in Congress will not like. That’s natural. That’s how our democracy works.

But we can surely find ways to work together on issues where there’s broad agreement among the American people. So I look forward to Republicans putting forward their governing agenda. I will offer my ideas on areas where I think we can move together to respond to people’s economic needs.

Obama’s sense that he’s still king of the world came through most clearly in his declaration that he intends to go through with mass amnesty for illegal aliens:

In terms of immigration, I have consistently said that it is my profound preference and interest to see Congress act on a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would strengthen our borders, would streamline our legal immigration system so that it works better and we’re attracting the best and the brightest from around the world, and that we give an opportunity for folks who’ve lived here, in many cases for a very long time, may have kids who are U.S. citizens, but aren’t properly documented, give them a chance to pay their back taxes, get in the back of the line, but get through a process that allows them to get legal.

The Senate on a bipartisan basis passed a good bill. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it was a sound, smart piece of legislation that really would greatly improve not just our immigration system but our economy and would improve business conditions here in the United States and make sure that American-born workers aren’t undercut by workers who are undocumented and aren’t always paid a fair wage and as a consequence, employers who are breaking the rules are able to undercut folks who are doing the right thing.

So, we got a bipartisan bill out of the Senate. I asked John Boehner at that point, can we pass this through the House? There’s a majority of votes in the House to get this passed. And Speaker Boehner, I think was sincere about wanting to pass it, but had difficulty over the last year getting it done. So, when he finally told me he wasn’t going to call it up this year, what I indicated to him is I feel obliged to do everything I can lawfully with my executive authority to make sure that we don’t keep on making the system worse, but that whatever executive actions that I take will be replaced and supplanted by action by Congress. You send me a bill that I can sign, and those executive actions go away.

That’s a commitment I made not just to the American people and to businesses and evangelical community, law enforcement folks, and everybody who’s looked at this issue and thinks that we need immigration reform, that’s a commitment that I also made to John Boehner, that I would act in the absence of action by Congress.

So, before the end of the year, we’re going to take whatever lawful actions that I can take, that I believe will improve the functioning of our immigration system, that will allow us to surge additional resources to the border, where I think the vast majority of Americans have the deepest concern.

And at the same time, I’ll be reaching out to both Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and other Republican as well as Democratic leaders to find out how it is that they want to proceed. And if they want to get a bill done, whether it’s during the lame duck or next year, I am eager to see what they have to offer.

But what I’m not going to do is just wait. I think it’s fair to say that I have shown a lot of patience and have tried to work on a bipartisan basis as much as possible. And I’m going to keep on doing so. But in the meantime, let’s figure out what we can do lawfully though executive actions to improve the functioning of the existing system.

Lots of words there, but it boils down to this: I, King Obama, want amnesty. Because of Republican intransigence, Congress failed give me amnesty. I’m going to take this election, in which the American people voted in overwhelming numbers to elect Congress people who are opposed to amnesty, as a sign that the people do not want Congress to touch the issue. Instead, they want me to handle the matter on my own. I therefore have a mandate to sign an executive order unilaterally granting mass amnesty to the illegal aliens in this country.

If you have the patience to read the transcript of his press conference, you’ll see this theme appear over and over again: Obama believes that, when Americans sent Democrat politicians packing, they weren’t repudiating Democrat policies but were, instead, sending a message that they want Obama to enforce Democrat policies unilaterally.

It’s always the same: Over the weekend, because of family demands, I get almost no time at my computer, and my email starts to back up. By Tuesday, between my two email accounts, I have several hundred unread emails. I then do the logical thing: I cravenly avoid my computer. Finally, late on Tuesday or perhaps by Wednesday, my conscience finally catches up with me and I embark on a frenzy of responding to emails, reading articles, and posting.

I’m heading for my frenzy now, although I’m somewhat hamstrung by the various drives I have to make on behalf of young people who cannot drive themselves. By the time you read this post, I’ll have been working on it intermittently for several hours, so I sure hope it’s good.

Lewinsky wasn’t 15 when she embarked on an affair with Clinton, in which case the fault would be entirely his. She was 24, by which time she was old enough to have a moral compass that said “You don’t have an affair with a married man,” and also old enough to have figured out that, considering that her partner in adultery was the president of the United States, when/if the fecal matter finally hit the fan, it would be a Cat 5 fecal storm.

It was not Matt Drudge’s fault; it was not the “bullying” media’s fault; it was not Lucianne Goldberg’s fault; it was not even Hillary’s fault, much as I would love to blame her just because I don’t like her: it was Monica’s fault and Bill’s fault, and neither is excused by the bad behavior of the other. Both behaved immorally, both tempted fate, and both got caught.

The only thing that’s really unfair is that Bill didn’t end up as ignominiously as Monica did. Apparently the party that oh-so-valiantly fights for women everywhere (as long as they’re not in politically correct Muslim countries or homes) was happy to kick Monica to the curb, while feting and enriching and even worshiping the man who let her take the fall.

How the New York Times is spinning WMDs

Up until Bush actually invaded Iraq, everyone and his uncle thought that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Indeed, as the New York Times recently made clear, everyone and his uncle (at least if they worked in the American government) knew that Hussein had WMDs . . . because the US had given them to Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. With this knowledge finally out there, Bush ought to be vindicated and the Democrats ought to be ashamed, except that in the looking glass world of American politics, that’s not what’s happening.

Presumably because of embarrassment about having given these WMDs to Hussein, during the Iraq War the Pentagon kept their discovery a secret, even though revealing them would have vindicated the decision to go to war. Meanwhile, back in the present, following Obama’s pullout from Iraq, leaving it ripe for ISIS, the New York Times is saying that these particular WMDs don’t count, precisely because they were old and American, rather than shiny new and Iraqi. I’m unclear on why they’re less WMD for this reason, but there you have it. (If you see the NYT’s author, C.J. Chivers, on The Colbert Report, he makes this point explicit.)

So, in a swirl of finger-pointing, embarrassment, and misdirection, we once again lose sight of the main point: Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Sure, we gave them to him when he was sort of our ally, but the fear in 2003 was that, when he turned out to be our enemy, he might use our weapons against us — kind of like it’s reasonable to fear now that ISIS will use against us the American weapons that the US military accidentally delivered into its hands (if ISIS reports are accepted as true).

The latest ISIS-released video gets me back to a point I’ve made before about ISIS. This particular video shows a father leading the charge when it comes to stoning his daughter to death for dishonoring the family through alleged adultery. Other than those specifics, though, it’s pure ISIS: Men torturing and murdering women, children, teenagers, and other men.

What makes ISIS different from all other torturers in the modern era is that other bad actors tried to hide their barbarism from the world at large (although they rubbed their own people’s nose in it to make sure the people stayed at heel).

The Soviet Union hid its terrors in the Kremlin basement and in Siberian gulags. When Westerners came to town, the Soviets showed their shiny happy face. The same holds true today when visitors go to Cuba or North Korea: they get taken on the rounds of all the polished, “successful” looking communities, while the government hides the fear, poverty, and despair that underpins its regime. (Think too of the Potemkin walls China put up around ghettos in Beijing for the Olympics.) The Nazis, even though they used fear to control people within their territory, were secretive about their most foul plans. The most grotesque emanations of their foul ideology took place Gestapo headquarters in occupied territory or in concentration camps.

But not ISIS. The videos we see of beheadings and stonings and crucifixions aren’t copies smuggled out of occupied territory by resistance groups trying to make the world aware that ISIS is a truly terrible entity. Instead, ISIS proudly circulates these videos to the four corners of the earth.

The word “proud” is important. ISIS doesn’t distribute these snuff films merely to strike fear in the hearts of weak Westerners. It does so because, just as we promote the products of our factories, singers, dancers, intellectuals, painters, and architects because our own sensibility says that these products reflect well on us, ISIS believes that it is showing its best face when it crucifies teenagers, beheads babies, or makes a party out of a father stoning his own daughter to death.

To ISIS, snuff films are the good stuff that they have to offer: “You can go to New York, and all that you’ll see are some big buildings, shows, art work, and a tall green woman on an island. But if you come to Iraq, you’ll get to kill people in the most brutal way possible. ISIS: It’s the Islamic vacation paradise!”

The Lewinsky essay appears in Steyn’s new book, The [Un]Documented Mark Steyn, a collection of his essays. At $29.95, the autographed hardback isn’t cheap but, if you buy it, you’ll not only get a great book with Steyn’s signature, but you’ll also help fund his continued litigation against unrivaled fraudster, Michael Mann (of the false hockey stick climate change canard).

I have to admit that I’ll be waiting for the Kindle version. Because of the arthritis in my wrists, I no longer want big, heavy books. They’re just too hard to hold. And because of my vision, which is about 20/2000 along with age-related far-sightedness, I like the way Kindle allows me to make my text nice and big. I console myself that, when I buy the Kindle version (assuming there is one) some part of that purchase price will still make it into Steyn’s pocket.

The LGBTQ mafia goes after Robert Oscar Lopez

If the name Robert Oscar Lopez is familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve read his articles over at American Thinker. Lopez, a bisexual English professor who was raised by two moms, opted for traditional marriage. Indeed, he and his wife just had their second child. Unfortunately for Lopez, he’s a man of conscience and, with the societal elevation of same-sex couples who adopt, special order, or use egg or sperm donated babies, he’s bravely asserted that same-sex parenting shouldn’t be encouraged. According to Lopez, same-sex homes are not like other homes and it’s unfair to bring a child into that environment. As a result, he’s become one of the most reviled men in America, insofar as the LGBTQ lobby is targeting him in the most vicious and inciteful terms imaginable.

As between bad foster care and a loving same-sex couple, I think it’s a no-brainer. But there’s a lot weirdness about same-sex couples who sort of create their own babies. I know a lesbian couple that had a gay friend inseminate the more feminine half of the couple. The resulting baby was a boy. The moms are good women and very attentive parents, except that the woman who bore him hates men so much that she cannot stand to have her own son touch her. Meanwhile the other partner also hates men with ferocity, so she’s remarkably cool about the kid. What kind of a home life is that?

When I read the news, I know that biological mixed sex parents can be pretty horrible too. Nevertheless, history and data tell us that the worst situation happens to the step child or, in our non-marrying age, the child living with a boyfriend who hasn’t even married his mother. Adults in a household with a non-biological child seem to yield to some atavistic imperative to stomp out this vulnerable creature that doesn’t have their genetic lineage. I can’t imagine that doesn’t hold true for same-sex couples too.

And a little child shall lead them

If I were a political candidate, I wouldn’t necessarily listen to a 20-year-old college student giving me advice about employment policies, nuclear negotiations, or executive management. I would definitely listen to that same college student, though, for advice about how to communicate with the youth of his generation. And finally, Republican politicians seem to be figuring out that, when it comes to political messaging, it is indeed a little child who shall lead them.

An Ebola timeline

One of the first things I do when I write a legal brief is create a timeline. Seeing how events relate to each other in time can be quite edifying, and it can expose unexpected strengths and weaknesses in ones case. Sharyl Attkisson has performed this useful task for Ebola, putting together a nice neat timeline showing America’s relationship to the virus since July of this year.

John Wick

I can’t figure out if John Wick is just a garden variety thriller, a trashy blood-fest, or something else. And doesn’t it really matter when it has Keanu? I actually probably won’t see it because I never see movies (Mr. Bookworm frowns on the expense and I’m loath to send money to Hollywood anyway), but a Keanu movie is always tempting….

Pictures

Some are my finds, most are from Caped Crusader, and some are from Sadie:

Last night we watched the most recent episode of John Oliver’s new HBO show, Last Week Tonight. I was interested in what Oliver’s take would be about the two top news events of the past week: Hamas’s terrorist action and Israel’s military response; and the refugee crisis on America’s own border.

The income equality stuff was the typical moronic shtick, which always sounds ridiculous coming out of the mouth of someone earning at least six figures a year. The absence of any discussion about the top stories was more interesting.

It occurred to me that Oliver could not comment on either story because he couldn’t risk saying what he and his audience really think: As far as they’re concerned, both Israel and America’s border should disappear. It’s one thing to speak these truths in a quiet room; it’s another thing entirely to put them on TV where others might be listening.

In this case, the “others listening” are the majority of Americans who support Israel and are horrified by the unfolding crisis on America’s southern border. It’s better to be thought a hardcore Leftist than to open your mouth and confirm it, right?

As for me, I’m not ignoring those stories. They are defining stories that will shape both the Middle East and America for some time to come. So, follow me into the wonderful world of actual news, rather than HBO’s fairy and unicorn land where a hard-Left, Cambridge-educated millionaire media star cries crocodile tears about “income inequality.”

By the by, the big issue shouldn’t be “income equality,” it should be “education inequality.” That’s not an issue that the DemProgs want to tackle, though, because it’s a direct result of the way in which America’s public schools have been turned into union fiefdoms. We can only hope that the California court ruling holding that tenure is unfair to students will weaken that stranglehold.

** 1 **

With all the dreadful headlines lately (border, Israel, ISIS, economy, etc.), I have to admit that the thing that strikes the most fear in my heart is the possibility that Elizabeth Warren could be a viable candidate for the White House and a possible winner thanks to her populist attacks on Wall Street. Unlike Obama who was a covert demagogue, she’s an overt demagogue and, for that reason, a very scary person. If she’s elected, it will speak to a profoundly damaging trend in American presidential politics.

** 2 **

Back in the dark, pre-gay rights era, Alfred Kinsey claimed that 10% of the American population was homosexual. Over the decades, many people challenged that number. After all, much of Kinsey’s research was done in prison populations and among gay prostitutes. More than that, many of Kinsey’s interviewers (including Kinsey himself) were gay or bisexual. To the extent they interviewed people in their own circles, this skewed the numbers. A recent poll, taken in a time of open homosexuality, probably offers a much more accurate number: less than three percent of Americans self-identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. I leave you to your own conclusions about what that number means in the context of today’s hot societal issues.

** 3 **

It takes a surprisingly small vector to tilt a healthy population into being a plague-ridden population. There’s reason to believe that the dissemination throughout the US of infected children may be that vector. It takes true cognitive dissonance to ignore this reality (and to make that point, I’ll run yesterday’s poster again today):

** 4 **

I noted already last week that the Left is accusing Christians of lacking compassion because they want to stop the flood of youthful refugees into America. Meanwhile, Glenn Beck has been oozing compassion for those refugees, which is why I’ve never liked him very much. It’s not the compassion that I dislike; it’s the ooze. He’s a smart man, but he’s ruled by his passions, not his brain. He is, in effect, the male Oprah. But back to the refugees.

I’ve long said that America’s pro-illegal immigrant cadre is inflicting cruel and profound damage on Latin America. As long as we provide a safety valve through our acceptance of illegal immigration, Latin America’s corrupt, inefficient governments and broken economic systems can thrive. They lose criminals, excess population, and non-producers (such as children), while gaining billions in American dollars their emigrants sent back home. What’s happening now on our southern border is this cruel system playing out on a massive scale.

Worse, at home, we’re losing the rule of law. The most compassionate system of all is one that’s free and based upon a reliable and just legislative and judicial system. In that system, people don’t fear the past, can work in the present, and can plan for the future. The Obama-engineered refugee crisis is destroying that too.

One would think that Obama would care that, by doing so, he’s hurting one of his core constituencies: Blacks. Blacks are horrified by the influx of people who will compete with them for low wage jobs and welfare. Obama couldn’t care less, though. What blacks need to understand is that Obama is not really black. He’s red — a hardcore Marxist whose primary goal is the destruction of America, which long stood as the bastion of freedom against Marxism. Blacks were just one more in a long list of useful idiots.

You’ve already heard that Israel agreed to a ceasefire and Hamas refused. Yay!

That’s not a sarcastic “yay.” I’m thrilled, because that little Kabuki play allowed Israel to prove her good faith and Hamas to prove its bad faith. More than that, Israel is winning. She would be insane to engage once again in her usual practice of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by giving up the instant she makes headway against the genocidal Islamic terrorists gunning for her.

And why is Israel winning? Elliott Abrams notes that Iron Dome has heartened the Israelis, that Hamas is making no headway and that, aside from a rise in antisemitic attacks across the world, nobody of importance is rallying to Hamas’s side. Egypt hates Hamas, and the rest of the Arab world is too involved in its own immolation to care about one more branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Huffington Post (of all places!) has published a fantastic opinion piece destroying the notion that Israel and Hamas are morally equivalent.

** 8 **

Rob Miller provides a first person account of the anti-Israel rally in Los Angeles, which ended with a DHS officer firing a shot when pro-Palestinian protesters got violent (as they invariably do).

If I had my way, every Jew would be required by Jewish law to (a) own a gun, know how to operate it, and carry it on his or her person at all times; and (b) have basic knowledge of hand-to-hand combat techniques.

** 9 **

Americans used to view the government as their servant; now they cringe before it as their master. Nowhere is this more apparent, funnily enough, than in the realm of local government.

I say “funnily enough” because the news is full of stories about overreaching federal, not local, government. In reality, though, the federal government doesn’t directly touch many people, while local government does. We here in Marin just had our own fight with a local government that wanted to add 900 apartment units along a two lane major artery between two highways. And anyone who has had to deal with a town inspector knows how those departments can abuse their power. Reagan knew how to deal with this problem.

** 10 **

Once upon a time, feminists opposed porn, arguing that it degraded women. Now, Planned Parenthood, an organization feminists adore because it provides abortion, also provides hardcore porn to teenagers — and the feminists don’t care because . . . abortions.

** 11 **

Ted Cruz has suggested impeaching Eric Holder. Holder’s most recent attack on free speech — having the DOJ investigate an anti-Obama Zombie parade float — makes it clear that Holder is a ripe target. If only Holder didn’t have that cafe au lait skin and his solid Marxist credentials, it would be a slam dunk.

** 12 **

Mr. Bookworm is cheap, a quality I admire because I’m cheap too. I was, and he is, a wage slave, which means our money will never grow exponentially. If we’re to have any savings in our old age, we actually have to save money to make that happen.

We still have a great lifestyle: a lovely home, electronics, vacations (Mr. Bookworm’s passion), reliable cars, etc. However, we shop sales, use coupons, and are careful to distinguish between things we want (which must be justified) and things we need (which must be bought as economically as possible).

One aspect of our cheapness is that we don’t waste gas or electricity. After all, the more you use, the more you pay. That’s why, when I met Mr. Bookworm long before anyone had thought of global warming, we conserved energy.

Nowadays, Mr. Bookworm insists that he conserves energy not to save money but because he’s “green.” He’s lying to himself. I know this because, whenever we go on vacation, when a hotel or cruise ship is paying for energy consumption, he’s incredibly profligate with natural resources, most notably when it comes to towels. He’s been know to go through 5-6 clean towels a day on vacation.

I’ve now learned that Mr. Bookworm is not alone in telling lies to himself about his energy consumption and green self-righteousness.

** 13 **

The Left loves to ridicule those on the right who, usually because of religious beliefs, have ideas that are outside of the mainstream. For example, they can’t get enough of the comedic wonders of the creationist theme park. Fine. It’s funny.

But part of the Left’s laughter, of course, is condescension. We would never be so stupid and irrational they reply.

To which Andrew Klavan says, “Really? You’d never be wacky, stupid, and irrational? Think again.” (Klavan doesn’t actually use those words, but it’s definitely the gist of this great post about Leftist lunacy.)

My new washer is so efficient that (a) I’ve gotten the greater part of two-and-a-half weeks’ worth of laundry done in a few hours and (b) my old dryer is performing better than ever. Yay! I was also able to spend the time in between loads finding all sorts of interesting posts, pictures, and videos to share with you.

One other thing. In order to make it easier for you to respond to a specific issue in a long round-up, I’m going to number each segment. If this new approach is annoying, tell me; if it helps, tell me too.

*1*

Something weird happened at ABC News: Someone uploaded an article with images of forlorn children living in primitive conditions at the border, and commented that this is what President Obama would see if he bothered to make the journey.

Yes, it’s true that more than half of American Jews still support Obama, but it’s also a stunning collapse in support for him. It seems as if American Jews are finally figuring out that Obama is not their friend.

Several years ago, I told an American Jewish woman — an Obama supporter, of course — that Obama was hostile to Israel. It was a friendly conversation, so I didn’t hector her and she didn’t scoff at me. Despite the absence of scoffing, though, I could tell she thought I was a few cards shy of a full deck. I haven’t seen her since that conversation, and I sometimes wonder if her mind wanders back to that day….

The refugee crisis that Obama invited on our southern border is doing what all refugee crises do: it’s bringing disease into our country (one of the things border demarcations are meant to prevent). What’s different about this refugee crisis is that our government, unlike all other governments, instead of concentrating the refugees where they can be monitored and treated, both for diseases and criminal behavior, is instantly spreading the refugees throughout America.

Considering how fond Leftists are of the canard about settlers deliberately infecting Native Americans with smallpox infested blankets, one would think that they would be alive to the dangers inherent in deliberately infecting all Americans with disease-infested people.

One of the beauties of narcissism is that there’s no past and no absolute truth. The past and the truth are always dictated by the needs of the moment. To the extent that the DemProgs are infected with institutional narcissism, you can see that “needs of the moment” psychology play out as Toure explains how unfair conservatives are being to Hillary Clinton.

*6*

If you think gorgeous, courageous, well-armed women are sexy, you’re clearly not a Muslim. You’ll also like this Facebook post.

*7*

Israelis do not target civilians. Period. To the Israeli’s great distress, civilians may sometimes die when Hamas uses them as human shields, but Israel will turn away from golden opportunities rather than knowingly strike children:

I’ve had about 5 minutes at my computer all day long, time that included checking out my friends’ Facebook pages. While waiting for a sales person, I caught this one which, as I noted in the post caption, reduced me to sputtering incoherence. Yes, this is the new meme: If you don’t think our borders should be overrun by illegal aliens, you’re un-Christian:

I still don’t have time to write, and I can’t think of a short, intelligent, non-defensive, expose-the-stupidity comeback. Help?

Thinking about it, maybe there is no comeback. Maybe when you’re dealing with a world view that enthusiastically applauds having the border overrun with a hundreds of thousands of unattended children, criminals, and possible terrorists, many of whom are carrying diseases ranging from the unpleasant to the terribly dangerous, there is nothing anyone can say to counter a poster that says it’s un-Christian to want to return these people to their own lands.

Kevin D. Williamson says that the IRS scandal is the worst scandal ever in American politics, since it fundamentally undermines our form of government. I’m inclined to agree with him and would even go so far as to wonder whether he’s been reading my blog.

***

And while I’m on the subject of destroying our form of government, Barack Obama is again investigating whether the power to issue executive orders is actually the power to re-write entirely federal legislation to suit his own political purposes. The administration claims it’s contemplating this exercise of power because the current program is controversial — but it’s only controversial because there are a lot of people who want to grant de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants. Here’s the deal in America as it once was: if you didn’t like the law, you changed it through the legislative process. Only in banana republics do you let the Dear Leader ignore the law and do it his way.

Here’s a squirrely idea from me: One of the things that totalitarian governments do is separate children from the parents, either physically or emotionally. (Remember that Hitler’s Youth would turn in their own parents for infractions.) To the extent that common core makes it impossible for parents to help elementary school aged children with what used to be basic math problems, you have to wonder if a goal, or a pleasant by-product, of the Common Core program is that it makes children see their parents as stupid, unhelpful, and unreliable.

***

Hillary lies again, this time about Iran. You’d think Hillary would eventually wise up to the fact that, in an internet age, it takes minutes, not years, to expose blatant lies. Of course, she’s counting on the media to shelter her. That’s naive too. In 2008, the media dropped her in a New York minute when Barack came along last time around. It even seems as if Bill’s dropping her, and Keith Koffler amusingly ponders why that’s so.

Career overseas civil servants should also think about dumping Hillary. The DiploMad explains that she (and her whole State Department) broke the special bond between America and her employees overseas.

***

More and more people are catching on to the fact that the Left is entirely adolescent in its approach to itself and to world governance. Matthew Continetti applies that adolescent theory to the New York Times, which is caught up in a firestorm made up of allegations that it fired Jill Abrahamson, its first female executive because she complained about wage discrimination. (And isn’t that irony lovely from a paper that carries the Democrats’ water on the wage discrimination campaign issue?)

You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they’re already American citizens. These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to contribute fully. And by that standard, 11 million undocumented aliens are already Americans, in my view.

In response to which one of my friends asked the obvious follow-up question: “If 11 million undocumented migrants are already American why do they all wave Mexican flags around?”

It’s raining!!! In California, that’s cause for celebration. Rain in Marin doesn’t mean it’s raining elsewhere, but it certainly matters to use Marin-ites — we have our own reservoir system, so we’re wholly dependent on local rainfall. Ironically, the rain is slowing down our major yard renovation, and we have to get that renovation down before April 1, when rationing kicks in (and rationing will happen unless we get enormous amounts of rain). Sigh. To ever silver lining, there seems to be a cloud.

***

Since I’m on the subject of weather, here’s a two-fer about the grand hoax that is climate change. The first, from American Thinker, provides compelling evidence that every single carbon centered computer model about the climate has proven to be wrong. Not just sort of wrong, mind you, but absolutely, completely, super-duper wrong. Climate theorists are now blaming volcanoes for the warming failure, but they’ll blame anything, won’t they? If you have a non-falsifiable doctrine, you can always blame external forces for your doctrine’s inevitable failure.

***

I’ve also got three great articles about Israel. The first looks as all the wonderful things going on in Israel despite the world’s efforts to squash that tiny, brilliant nation. The second looks at the grotesque hypocrisy that sees gay rights advocates champion Palestinians at the expense of Israel. The third looks as the fact that Israel stands poised to save Syrians, the rest of the Middle East, and perhaps the whole world, from the unfathomable danger of a nuclear Syria.

***

Traditionally in America, a state attorney general is sworn to uphold the laws of the state. After all, if the AG doesn’t do that, what’s his purpose? He’s there to represent and ensure the stability, reliability, and credibility of the law. If he doesn’t carry out that task, he just becomes another functionary in a banana republic. And that banana republic status is precisely what U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder dreams of, for he has instructed state AG’s to ignore any law that supports traditional marriage.

***

I’ve written here frequently about the lunacy that is the modern American college or university. This is a subject that exercises me a great deal because I have two children heading towards college in the next few years. As many Americans do, I’m deeply offended by the cost of college, especially the cost of the once prestigious liberal arts colleges back East. It’s insane to spend or borrow $250,000 so that your child can move into your basement and become a barista. In a changing world, colleges have actually changed in the wrong direction. They’ve turned away entirely from educating young people to become useful and productive citizens.

What colleges have done, instead, is train youngsters to become lunatics, which is my second reason for being upset about modern American higher education. Last week, Bruce Bawer warned about a lunatic Leftist at Harvard. This week, Chicks on the Right warns about a whole cadre of potentially violent lunatic Leftists as Dartmouth. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this collection of young people expensively unmoored from reality comes from deep within the fever swamps of the gay rights movement.

I’ll say here what I always say: I believe that the government should stay out of people’s bedrooms. I believe that gay people should be free from discrimination, harassment, violence, etc. I believe that the heart loves where it will. But let’s get real here: These loony-toonz aren’t about gay rights. They are about using the gay agenda as a wedge issue to destroy America as a free-market, individual-centered society, and to replace it with a hard-core centralized government and a socialized economy. I wonder if these “idealists” have any inkling that, when/if they’ve finally achieved their agenda they’ll meet the same fate that leading-edge revolutionaries always experience, whether in 18th Century France, or Russia, or China: The new statist government identifies them as troublemakers and kills them first.

***

My sister lives in Oregon, a state that has as its primary goal the creation of happiness. We’ve talked before about the fact that a state can impose “happiness” only if it first has the right to define “happiness.” The reality, is that there’s only a slender likelihood that the state bureaucrat’s idea of what constitutes “happiness” is the same as your idea. Moreover, if not everyone is happy — and no one can ever be — the situation is ripe for constant revolution. Still, Oregon tries. The libertarians on the Eastern side are constantly besieged by the statists on the Western, coastal side, who have turned Oregon into one of the most heavily regulated, and least economically successful, states in America. (For more on happiness, at a deep, philosophical level, rather than at a pop-culture, “everything is free” level, check out Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual.)

***

And finally, knowledge that I gleaned in my youth catches up with the present. I’ve written before about my years at Berkeley, when I socialized with ultra-Leftist professors who lived in lavish houses in the Berkeley hillside, all of which seemed to be tended by Hispanic maids and Japanese gardeners. These effete, armchair revolutionaries enjoyed their Marxism because they lived on the straining back of the servant class.

That was a long time ago, but one modern-day Leftist has finally admitted that, yes, needing servants is precisely why the Leftist idle rich are so gung-ho about illegal immigrants:

As a friend of mine said after watching that, “If a conservative of any stripe were to insinuate undocumented workers were all gardeners, landscapers, and hotel workers the race card would have been played before he could even finish the sentence.”

If America survives long enough for historians to write books about this period in her history, surely Eric Holder’s recent directive (issued in response to pressure from Democrats), holding that federal agents may not consider Islam as a factor in terrorism or Latinos as the most likely illegal immigrants will surely rank as Exhibit A in the decline of a once great nation:

The Justice Department will significantly expand its definition of racial profiling to prohibit federal agents from considering religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation in their investigations, a government official said Wednesday.

The move addresses a decade of criticism from civil rights groups that say federal authorities have in particular singled out Muslims in counterterrorism investigations and Latinos for immigration investigations.

The Bush administration banned profiling in 2003, but with two caveats: It did not apply to national security cases, and it covered only race, not religion, ancestry or other factors.

I agree completely that not all Muslims are terrorists, just as only an idiot would claim that the only illegal immigrants are Hispanics. To focus only on those two groups, without reference to any other potential terrorists or illegal immigrants is foolhardy. (Although I’m unclear about the whole illegal immigrant thing anyway, considering that Obama is already violating the law — without Republican push-back — by refusing to enforce immigration laws.) Still, one would have to be equally idiotic to pretend that the vast majority of terrorist attacks don’t involve Muslims and that the greatest number of illegal immigrants don’t come from South of the Border.